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Saturday, July 15, 2017

Donald
Trump Jr. met with a Russian lawyer who promised damaging information
about Hillary Clinton during his father's presidential campaign, after
being told the information was "part of Russia and its government’s
support for Mr. Trump." (Video: Elyse Samuels, Jenny Starrs/Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

After media scrutiny forced Donald Trump Jr. to reveal the email chain
that showed President Trump’s top advisers met with a Russian lawyer to
gain information about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government, the
Trump camp adopted the retroactive spin that Trump Jr. had actually
shown admirable transparency about this meeting. Trump Jr. went on Sean Hannity’s show to do damage control, leading the president to exult: “He was open, transparent and innocent.”
But this new scoop from NBC News will make that posture a lot harder to sustain:

The Russian lawyer who met with the Trump team after a promise of
compromising material on Hillary Clinton was accompanied by a
Russian-American lobbyist — a former Soviet counter intelligence officer
who is suspected by some U.S. officials of having ongoing ties to
Russian intelligence, NBC News has learned.

The lobbyist, who denies any current ties to Russian spy agencies,
accompanied the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, to the June 2016 meeting
at Trump Tower attended by Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul
Manafort. The Russian-born American lobbyist served in the Soviet
military and emigrated to the U.S., where he holds dual citizenship.

The Associated Press has identified the lobbyist as Rinat Akhmetshin.
It is not yet clear what the significance of this is, in terms of what
it says about what exactly transpired at the meeting. Trump Jr. has dismissed
the meeting as insignificant, because no “meaningful information” came
of it, but this news invites more scrutiny of that claim. As NBC News
notes, such matters will be of great interest to special counsel Robert
S. Mueller III and congressional investigators.

But right now, here’s what we can say: This news once again underscores
that we are seeing a pattern of what we might call obfuscation by
omission. This new detail should lead us to look anew at two key facts:
First, that the president reportedly signed off on the initial statement
from Trump Jr. that covered up the real reason for the meeting. And
second, that top White House advisers are now reportedly reluctant to
defend this meeting, because they could be opening themselves up to
legal vulnerability. Here’s the pattern so far:

Additionally, CNN reports that sources are now leaking
that Trump’s lawyer claims he was not part of the process of signing
off on that statement. The Trump camp claims the president didn’t
actually sign off on it. But there is no reason to doubt the Times’s
reporting — it’s hard to imagine the president wouldn’t have been
involved in those discussions. And as CNN notes,
if that happened and Trump’s lawyer was not part of it, the president
“may have opened himself up to new legal issues not covered by
attorney-client privilege.” Remember, Trump may have participated in
crafting a statement covering up the real reason for the meeting.

That initial effort at obfuscation was then demolished when it was disclosed that
according to sources who had seen the email chain, the meeting was
really about sharing material about Clinton that came from the Russian
government. That compelled Trump Jr. to issue another statement
conceding that such information had been offered to him. But that
statement carefully noted that Trump Jr. did not know the “name” of the
lawyer, in effect suggesting he had no idea what the source of the
information was.

Yet that claim of transparency, too, has now been blown apart, now
that NBC News has reported on the previously undisclosed presence of a
former Soviet counter-intelligence officer who is suspected by U.S.
officials of current ties to Russian intelligence.

Now note this Politico report,
which claims that Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner (who was also at the
meeting, along with then-campaign chair Paul Manafort) wants a more
aggressive press response to this story, but other top White House
advisers are demurring:

But some of the communications aides, including press secretary Sean
Spicer, and other senior staffers have expressed reservations. They say
it’s best to leave it to outside counsel to handle the furor around
Trump Jr., and fear inviting further legal jeopardy if Trump aides and
allies more forcefully defend a meeting that they don’t fully know the
details of, according to the sources.

Gee, ya think? Today’s NBC News report should only intensify these fears
of defending the unknown. Here’s the bottom line: While we don’t yet
know how significant this meeting will prove, legally or otherwise,
every additional revelation about it — and about the Russia scandal more
generally — has only come to the light through the pressure of
aggressive press scrutiny. Trump seems to have participated in an active
effort to mislead the country about this meeting, which is the first
concrete evidence that his top campaign officials were eager to collude
with Russia’s efforts to sabotage our democratic process. And Trump’s
deception efforts should themselves now receive more intense scrutiny.

Trump’s combination of setbacks and delays on key policy initiatives
highlight how the president is struggling to advance a populist vision
of governing in a Republican Party that historically has not been
receptive to such an approach. With his budget and health care, Trump is
falling in line with some of his party’s most conservative voices, even
if the policies threaten to harm many of the working-class voters who
elected him.

Basically all that’s left of Trump’s “populist nationalism” is the
stepped-up deportations, the travel ban (which is partially in effect)
and the hostility to international cooperation on climate change.

If correct, the game here would be to entice the moderates to support
the “motion to proceed” on the understanding that they can “soften” the
bill through amendments, but McConnell would effectively block any real
changes, banking on enormous pressure forcing them to support it in the
final vote.* KEEP AN EYE ON BRIAN SANDOVAL: Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval (R) tells CNN that the threshold test for the new GOP health-care bill is how it treats more than 200,000 poor Nevadans:

“I’m greatly concerned and very protective of the expansion population.
They are living healthier and happier lives as a result of their
receiving coverage, and for them to lose that at this point would be
very hurtful for them. And it’s about people — this is about people. And
210,000 people in my state,” the Nevada Republican told CNN … He said
he has not yet reviewed the bill, but “generally, my understanding is
the bill isn’t that much different than its previous iteration.”

When told about the reduction in federal funding for Medicaid, the
majority of the public oppose (65 percent) major reductions to Medicaid
as part of a plan to repeal and replace the ACA, while three in ten (28
percent) support such reductions.

Even 41 percent of Trump supporters oppose the Medicaid cuts, though
more (51 percent) support them. A lot of Trump voters will be hit by the
cuts.

Nearly 15 million Americans would lose their Medicaid coverage by 2026
under the Senate bill, according to the CBO. Verma sought to minimize
that outlook, saying states could use the stabilization funding to
heavily subsidize private coverage for these Americans — even though the
size of the fund does not come close to the bill’s $772 billion in cuts
to the program over the next decade.

That would do little. The bottom line is that any moderate GOP senator
who supports this bill will be revealing any previously expressed
concerns about the massive Medicaid cuts to be insincere.

This bill would send insurance markets into a classic death spiral.
Republicans have been predicting such a spiral for years, but keep being
wrong: All indications are that Obamacare, despite having some real
problems, is stabilizing … And let’s be clear: Many of the victims of
this sabotage would be members of the white working class, people who
voted for Donald Trump in the belief that he really meant it when he
promised that there would be no cuts to Medicaid and that everyone would
get better, cheaper insurance.

It is strange that Republicans are pushing a plan that would actually
cause the implosion of markets that they have pretended is currently
underway due to the law itself.

* AND TRUMP BLASTS GOP SENATORS FOR FAILURE: Good morning, Mr. President. You are up very early, aren’t you?

Interesting approach: Hey, GOP, you and your health-care bill both
stink, and if it goes down, I’ll blame you for it. But hurry up and pass
it — regardless of what’s in it or how it impacts you — so I can have a
win already!